Into the Mountains Part 2

  As we drove further north, past lake after lake, the cars and caravans started to peel off to left and right, to motels and cabins and campsites. The traffic was much thinner and when we got to Saranac Lake there was, amazingly, it being high season, hardly any traffic at all. 

Confusingly the town is called Saranac Lake but the lake is called Flower Lake. There is a lake called Saranac Lake but it's further away. Never mind. I'll take Flower Lake any time.

Now wouldn't it be nice to have one of those houses!

There's definitely a flower feel to the town.  Wildflowers by the lake, waterlilies shimmering

A very un-American trend for natural-looking gardens.

Not much mulch and manicure here. They must have been to the Chelsea Flower Show. 

Just my sort of thing! I must get some more coneflowers for the jungle.

Hardly any tourists milling around in the quaint little town. Perfect!

This is the Episcopal Church - called St Luke the Beloved Physician, for reasons which will become clear. (I did not take pictures of the Catholic church - sadly, as usual, the least prepossessing ecclesiastical building in town.) But this little one was charming...

An almost-English house!

An impressive First World War memorial in the little park. So many names, considering that America was only in it from 1917 and the size of the town. It reminded me of the poignant memorials in French villages. The difference is that this one lists all those who served. Thankfully only a handful died. The names of those who fell were (I assume) marked by little stars.

This made us laugh.

Somehow I don't think it'll be open tomorrow.

A reminder that it's not always hot here. Hard to imagine.

Now what is a pair of scissors doing stuck to a column?

Ah - a barber's shop! Sweet!

I showed my Britishness by immediately assuming this was the Loch Ness Monster.

Not so, apparently. There is a monster in nearby Lake Champlain, name of Champ. Now who stole the idea from whom,  I wonder? I think I can guess but I'll be diplomatic.

I've never been to a place with so many signs supporting Ukraine. Good for them.

In one street, several houses had mock election signs saying, "Zelensky 2024".  They wish!

to be continued

Into the Mountains Part 1

  Come early August Hubby and I headed off to the Adirondacks. These claim to be mountains, though they're nothing like the Alps. Still, they're gorgeous to look at, all forests and lakes, the place where the Gilded Age millionaires established huge estates with giant wooden houses they tweely called "camps"  The weather was gorgeous (never mind that the drought was ruining my Cattaraugus County garden - I tried not to think about it) and the drive, in hubby's vintage Volvo, most scenic. On the way we stopped to eat our sandwiches at Verona Beach on Oneida Lake, which has a spectacular lighthouse.

Yes it's a big enough lake to have a lighthouse.

There were pink wooden houses that looked like the sort of places generations of families would come back to and make memories in on the edge of a little private beach. 

Children paddled and someone walked down with an armful of what we used to call rubber rings but are now probably called personal flotation devices - or something. Talk about memories...

On the other side of the car park, the owners of that particular house were making their political sympathies clear.

Then it was up into the hills, joining the inevitable stream of  traffic, dragging caravans, carrying kayaks and canoes and precariously suspended bikes. Just like the Lake District.  Except the Adirondack Park is 6 million acres - about then times as big. 

We passed lake after lake, some with names - Otter Lake, Raquette Lake, Long Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Tupper Lake some just numbers - I lost count. (The whole park has 10,000 lakes). Past endless campsites and car parks for trailheads with rustic signs and villages with milling tourists and rustic shops and rustic log cabins aka "cottages' and more lakes and more woods. There was a Golden Beach too and, seized with a desire to see it, we ended up stuck fast in a queue of mostly giant lumbering vehicles all waiting to check in. So we gave up on that one. But as we neared our destination, something surprising happened.

to be continued.

Calf a 'Mo..

 I was at the farmers' market last Saturday morning chatting to my friends from the delightful  Flanigan Hill Farm  when I did a double take. There, happily snoozing in a little pen was a tiny Jersey calf.

They'd had a competition among the local kids to name him - and the name the little girl who won came up with was ...Calvin. Very clever that.

I hasten to add that Calvin the calf was not one of the farm products for sale. It's not that sort of market.

Light Effects

 On our magical country lane.

It always seems like an entry to fairyland and the stillness, when there aren't any pickup trucks going up and down, is unbelievable. Not even the sounds of the forest - chipmunks making kissing noises, a faraway woodpecker, a rustling of something in the bushes, the drip of water from the trees.

Walking down on an afternoon there were some interesting clouds.

I had a debate with hubby whether this was a mackerel sky. "Mackerel sky, neither wet nor dry" is the not very helpful sailors' term, apparently.

While below the roadside wild flowers run riot. It's chicory and Queen Anne's lace time right now. My paltry phone camera can't capture the unique bluey-purpleness of the chicory.

Meanwhile a mysterious new structure has appeared by the road.  Will they be selling something? And if so, what? I hope for million dollar pickle like the kind I bought once from an Amish lady in severe blue dress attached with pins, not vain buttons and mob cap, who apologised that it was her first attempt.  her effort was to die for but I never found her or any comparable pickle again. No I expect this, if anything at all, will be selling courgettes/zucchini and corn. 

We got our first corn of the season this week. The early batch was heavenly, sweet and luscious. Poor Brits who have to get theirs from Waitrose. The best way with corn is to put the water on to boil and then pick it. We don't quite do that but buy it from a farmer who trundles up with a fresh batch several times a day. We could try growing it ourselves but it wouldn't stand a chance. A propos of which hubby was looking out of the front window and shouted, "Oh no!" Two cheeky deer were casing the joint. He chased them away but for how long?

The Flowers Get into Gear

 Everything happens slowly, slowly here. This was our cottage garden a couple of weeks ago, gradually getting into shape.

The daisies always want to get in early. They almost seemed to to be floating.

And the other side of the door this morning.

Meanwhile on the garden shed at the back, Jack was getting into gear.

In my humble opinion definitely upping his game and looking exceptionally chipper this year.

And the lilies that survived the earlier deer invasion have been putting a brave face on things with some weird and wonderful colours.

I exchanged deer commiserations with my neighbour up the road. "Worst winter for deer I've ever known. They wiped me out. I had to start again from scratch," he sighed. We compared our respective weaponry. Deer repellent spray, Irish Spring soap - I added Cayenne pepper to the mix. The garden smells like a mixture of rotten eggs and the inside of a minicab and I can't stop sneezing.

My neighbour has got himself some "deer alerts" - they're motion-activated and make a loud noise. I'm not sure if I want to be kept awake all night. I did see one in the shape of a wolf that howled every time a deer approached. I would have bought it but hubby pointed out that the deer would soon get wise to it,  "Funny, Mildred, that wolf always seems to sound the same". "Ignore it Delia, it's just one of their lame tricks - now come over here, this lily bud is truly delicious....". 

They don't seem to eat hydrangeas though.

Well not so far.

The Jungle's Progress

 Dateline: Cattaraugus County, western New York state

  It's what I frequently call the triumph of hope over experience. A few weeks ago I was gripped by that feeling of joy and expectation, as I looked around the Jungle and saw festoons of baby blueberries and thought how the winter deer-proofing had paid off, along with my sloshing coffee grounds all over the bushes, as my wise elderly neighbour had suggested. I looked forward to a magnificent harvest.

And here, close by were wild blackberries, tiny but they'd soon be tasty. (Actually last year I thought they were raspberries but my clever identification app tells me they're a type of blackberry. Since the app is right about fifty per cent of the time, I can choose, so this year they're blackberries.)

The apple tree which split a couple of years ago had doubly recovered, complete with incipient crop. (In the Jungle, you never know which apple trees are going to produce in which year. It's always a surprise.) 

Not to mention some promising-looking cherry tomatoes which I bought from a man at the Garden Festival and suspended in a hanging basket, the best I could do to keep them away from the chipmunks. I have given up on trying to grow tomatoes anywhere near the ground. The chipmunks grab them when they're still green, pull them off the vine, take one bite and discard the rest.

Ok, so how do things look now? Well the blueberries are still green, with the exception of the small bush I bought last year which is totally stripped. Thank you again, chipmunks. The stripy scamps are fast becoming our Alpha Pest. When something is small enough to get through the fence mesh and in any case is adept at burrowing, trying to grow anything is well and truly hopeless. As a result, as soon as a berry turns vaguely blue I pick it off and eat it before something else does - it may be sour but it's a small victory. 

I can't pull the same stunt with the blackberries, which are still red - and noticeably fewer in number.

I do, however, still entertain some hope for the tomatoes.

There has definitely been some progress here. Just enough to keep up my misguided faith in the innate benevolence of Nature.

Progress report on the flowers coming shortly. Watch this space......

Lookback to the Fourth

 A complicated couple of weeks - during which the Blog was laid low by a non-Covid bug (watch out - they're gleefully waiting to surprise us) but slowly getting back to business now.

I didn't get a chance to tell you about my take on the Transatlantic alliance - our 4th of July trifle, which, though I say it myself was delicious and managed to combine the Queen's Jubilee Dessert with American Independence  Day. I did get the number of stripes right, if not the stars.

How's that for a  Special Relationship? Hubby and junior family members were very chuffed.

Meanwhile a new turkey family have been visiting, descendants, presumably of the gang at the top of the page. They steered clear of the sunlounger but were seen nosing around the front garden.

You can just about see one in the distance. Best photo I could get without scaring them off.  Apparently they like to eat ticks - the more of those blighters (one of which recently sunk its jaws into hubby's leg, necessitating a visit to Urgent Care) they gobble the better.